A wide range of medical procedures involve placing objects, such as sensors, tubes, catheters, dispensing devices and implants, within a patient's body. When placing a probe within the body, it may be desirable to track the position of a distal tip of the probe within the body.
The position of the distal tip (or any other portion of the probe within the body, for that matter) can be tracked, for example, by fluoroscopy. Fluoroscopy is an imaging technique which uses X-rays to obtain real-time images of the internal structures of a patient. During fluoroscopy, a patient is positioned between an X-ray generator and an X-ray detector which collects (and sometimes displays) the real-time images. Current fluoroscopy systems typically use a flat panel detector which collects the real-time images and conveys them to a remote console for display.